A variety of steel head gaskets having associated sealing aids are known to the art. Typically, head gaskets require both fire rings in the combustion openings and seals around various of the fluid openings. Such head gaskets frequently employ press-fit or staked in place fire rings, and inserted grommets. There is a risk, with such gaskets, that one or more of the sealing aids will be dislodged and that the gasket will be installed without such a sealing aid, in which event the engine in which the gasket is used could be damaged or destroyed.
A variety of suggestions have been made to overcome these possible problems and difficulties. For example, printed beads have been deposited on the gasket surfaces to provide seals around fluid openings. Suggestions for securing fire rings in combustion openings by an elastomeric bead which is molded around the peripheral edge of one metal layer to embed an edge of one layer of a multiple metal layer gasket have been proposed. Yet none of these suggestions has made available an integrated steel plate head gasket which has both a floating fire ring as well as effective fluid seals, or which produces a head gasket which effectively guarantees that all of the sealing aids will remain in place, regardless of rough handling, when the gasket is installed.